I will soon be moving to my new house, and am curious as to whether I will naturally have some areas that will be good for puerh storage. I'm browsing hygrometers on Amazon, and see lots of very cheap versions, priced under $10--similar to the variety and selection of the little digital pocket scales I use for my tea. Are there any particular things to look out for in buying one of these?

I'm quite curious about this, because I'm in Los Angeles, not particularly close to the beach, but close enough to get some cooling and damp breezes, and I'll also be starting up some aquariums again, which will add to the humidity in some parts of the house.

I am currently using an old hygrometer (non-digital), just a few dials to measure the air. I have no experience with digital hygrometers.

I think the aquarium might be an interesting touch. You might try monitoring the air with and without the aquarium. In the past, I have had some luck humidifying the air by making an enclosed place, like a walk-in closet, and then placing a water pot in the middle of the closet. It increased the humidity quite a bit, and just needs to be tended to every few days.

I know there have been several more recent threads about storage, but I wanted to use this one to add my recent experiences with hygrometers.

So hands down, an electronic hygrometer will be more accurate. If you have a lot of puer stored, by all means go digital. Since I have a few smaller sealed containers of puer, controlled with humidity packs, I willingly accepted the risks of analog hygrometers, because I wanted a small, unobtrusive hygrometer for each case. And I've heard some Chinese storage obsessives fret about electromagnetic radiation near puer, so this ought to make them happy too.

The hygrometers first need to be calibrated: if you place them in a freezer bag with damp salt for several hours, the humidity ought to read 75%. See here. Apparently analog hygrometers can also get "locked up" and need exposure to a high-humidity environment, like near your tea kettle. I can imagine many negative commenters on Amazon are not aware of these two facts.

This one consistently read about 5-7% low for me. The back unscrews for calibration, though you need a Phillips size 0. This one was only a couple ticks under 75 when I calibrated it, but then it seemed like its response range was condensed--it read too high when it was dry, and not high enough when it was humid. You can calibrate it with needle nose pliers.

I just got an inexpensive electronic hygrometer/thermometer, and that should give me more confidence about the accuracy of the analog ones.

Last edited by Evan Draper on Sep 23rd, '14, 16:58, edited 1 time in total.

I use cheap electronic and analog ones. I like to keep the cigars and tea both at 70% (not in the same location of course ). It's been quite easy to do with the odorless silica cat litter. Just put some in a tupperware, spray it with distilled water do that about 75% of the beads are clear (meaning the bead is saturated). I open it almost daily whether I'm drinking or not, just to check the air flow, and the fluctuations have always been just a couple of points up or down, in which case I spray more or add some more dry or take some wet beads out. Usually not, though, and I only have to adjust once every couple months. I'm on on the on the same jug of distilled water for about year now. The beads are totally odorless. This goes for my tea and cigars, which are in the cheapest spanish cedar humidor you can find on amazon lol! I'm happy with it overall. If I had money to blow and super expensive tea, sure, I'd buy a a fancy humidor humidifier but I feel like this is achieving exactly the same result for negligible cost and and perhaps less work than there is to maintain an expensive pumidor.